In the era of ubiquitous connectivity, people will not only consume vast amounts of data but stay continuously connected across more devices and platforms. But what will become of WiFi as an access technology? What role will WiFi play when 5G promises near-instant connectivity across several applications? Will WiFi disappear into the mobile ether? Clients, please log in to view the full content.

On 2 August 2018, Arm announced the acquisition of data management firm Treasure Data and the launch/re-branding of its IoT platform as “Pelion”. It reportedly acquired Mountain View, CA-based Treasure Data for about $600 million, making it one of the largest acquisitions in Arm’s history. At a time when the large, diverse IoT platform vendor landscape is slowly starting to consolidate, and many vendors are starting to focus more narrowly on the areas where they can differentiate, Arm is taking a contrarian approach by going full-stack, and broadly-horizontal.

In 2017, Cavium, Qualcomm, and Applied Micro were all sampling ARM-based SoCs targeted at data center servers. With Applied Micro spinning off its server CPU business to newly founded Ampere Computing and Qualcomm demonstrating no tangible design wins after announcing commercial availability for its Centriq SoC in November 2017, hopes for success of an ARM-based CPU ecosystem moved to Cavium, and in 2017 Cavium kept the design wins and partnership announcements coming. In January, Atos announced Cavium’s ThunderX2 will power its HPC for the EU-funded Mont Blanc project. In March, Cavium announced a partnership with Microsoft and in November revealed designs for a Cavium-powered Project Olympus OCP server. In May, Gigabyte, Ingrasys, and Inventec announced and subsequently launched new servers based on ThunderX2. In June, Penguin announced its Open Compute server lineup will feature a ThunderX2 sku. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

Arm has acquired Stream Technologies and will add the company to Arm’s IoT Service Group to extend the Mbed Device Management Platform with connectivity services/service management capabilities. Arm acquired Stream Technologies primarily to further Arm’s end-to-end connectivity and device management platform that helps organizations manage the complexity of connecting hundreds of billions of future IoT devices. The acquisition enhances Arm’s strategic positioning in the IoT market, provided that Arm can successfully execute on leveraging the potential synergies between Arm’s resources and Stream Technologies’ technical capabilities.

Data gleaned from individuals serves as the foundation of smart cities, but privacy is a major concern. The new GDPR is going into effect in the EU on May 25, 2018. It will unify regulations, bringing power and confidence back to EU citizens and residents, giving them greater control over how their personal data is used and protected.

In 2017, AMD changed the market dynamic for entry-level enterprise servers with its EPYC SoC, providing not just healthy competition but also opportunities for new designs utilizing the large number of memory channels and high I/O bandwidth available with EPYC. OEMs like Supermicro, Sugon, and Asus and white box server vendors like Wiwynn, Inventec, Gigabyte, and Tyan quickly backed EPYC, introducing over a dozen server models based on AMD’s SoC in 2H17. CSPs (cloud service providers) also embraced EPYC with Microsoft, Baidu, Tencent and JD.com all adopting EPYC-based servers. Baidu in particular boosted EPYC’s credibility in the market as it implemented a new 1-socket server design that utilizes EPYC’s memory channels and I/O bandwidth. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

On Monday January 23rd, Silicon Labs announced the acquisition of Zentri, a 20-person module and software vendor, for an undisclosed amount. This insight will provide summary and analysis of Silicon Lab’s recent acquisition.

IHS views Cisco’s acquisition of Jasper as strongly positive for both companies. As the IoT becomes a mainstream technology trend affecting most industries and markets, major ICT vendors across the board have announced strategies to play a key role in the development of IoT technologies, services, and standards.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), continues to advance its agenda to support growth and development in the technology sector. To this end, a billboard positioned in one of the main lobbies was eye catching. It announced the creation of a “State Innovation Scorecard.”

This announcement is reminiscent of AT&T’s “3G Access Program”, launched in 2010, when the company worked with a number of different module vendors to introduce low cost 3G modules into the M2M market. Then, as now, the move suggests a recognition from AT&T that relatively expensive module pricing has constrained M2M and IoT market growth and at the same dissuaded developers from transitioning to 3G and 4G technologies. While other factors were at play, the company’s 3G Access Program did...

AT&T has been steadily increasing its efforts and focus on the burgeoning smart cities market. In September of 2015 the company announced a new “Smart Cities Organization” with dedicated resources led by general manager Mike Zeto. The company is also a corporate member of Envision America, a nationwide program launched by the White House in September 2015, which focuses on smart city solutions that...

The Orange announcement is an important reminder that it is not enough for standards bodies to certify a technology. In order to provide complex public network services over large geographic areas meeting service level agreements, operators will need to trial these technologies themselves in the field. EC-GSM is particularly relevant to European operators....